History, Music, and FLAGS!

What a gift friends are! One recently gave us another flag (related) book, National Anthems for the United Nations and their Allies, copyright (get this) 1943, by The Boston Music Company. They’re still in business, but apparently this title is no longer in print. So to appreciate this, one needs to put oneself in the mind-set of the early WWII world. From the opening page:

Ardent and eternal as is the yearning for peace in all civilized nations, it is the perils confronted, the sufferings endured, the heroic sacrifices made in time of war which crystalize and intensify those feelings which human beings from time immemorial have termed, each in their own language, PATRIOTISM.

Thus it is that almost all National Anthems are martial songs. …

Goodness!. Well, enough of that for a while. Now to the bonus of this little gift: included in the book was a two-page foldout of flags, divided into “UNITED NATIONS” and “ASSOCIATED POWERS”. What a score. (Excuse the pun: score-anthems. Get it?)

The anthems in the book’s index are not quite so arranged, listing 31 anthems of “THE UNITED NATIONS” (we won’t list them here), followed by those of 16 “ASSOCIATED POWERS”. We will list them here as they are called out in this footnote in the index:

Free Denmark and Fighting France are officially at war with the Axis; Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela have broken off diplomatic relations with Germany, and like the people of Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Iran, Latvia, Liberia, and Lithuania, are actively assisting the United Nations.

The two countries that really caught our interest were Free Denmark and Fighting France (formerly known as Free France). Of the former, our usually reliable friends at WikipediA were virtually silent. But there was a boatload of information on Free France, including this little graphic of its flag with its Croix de Lorraine. The flag shown on the foldout with the “rhomboid field” is actually the Free French naval jack and French naval honour jack. (More on that in the same Wiki article.)

As a last note (sorry), we glanced at the last page of anthems: Ethiopia. At the bottom, this footnote:

Wartime transportation difficulties made it impossible to obtain from Ethiopia a copy of this Anthem in time to include it in the first edition. We are glad to be able to add it to this revised edition but technical printing problems compel us to place it on the last page instead of in it alphabetical position in the book.